Dementia in the News

Demographic ageing is a worldwide process that shows the successes of improved healthcare over the last century. Many are now living longer and healthier lives and so, the world population has a greater proportion of older people. We all agree that ageing brings some challenges as well. Many international meetings have touched on this issue and adopted statements, for instance, the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing from 2002.

For every excess pound piled on the body, the brain gets a little smaller.

That's the message from new research that found that elderly individuals who were obese or overweight had significantly less brain tissue than individuals of normal weight.

"The brains of obese people looked 16 years older than their healthy counterparts while [those of] overweight people looked 8 years older," said UCLA neuroscientist Paul Thompson, senior author of a study published online in Human Brain Mapping.

The world's population is graying, and as a result, nations around the globe are staring down a rising tide of people who will grapple with the ravages of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. According to a new report from Alzheimer's Disease International, some 35.6 million people worldwide will have a form of dementia in 2010. That number is expected to nearly double every 20 years, reaching an estimated 65.7 million in 2030 and 115.4 million in 2050.

A new shoe outfitted with a GPS chip aims to offer peace of mind to Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers.

The embedded GPS tracking system will allow the wearer of the shoe to be located instantly online and for their whereabouts to be monitored in real time.

The shoe may offer hope to the growing number of people with Alzheimer's disease. More than 26 million people worldwide live with Alzheimer's, and the figure is set to exceed 106 million by 2050, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health.

Alzheimer's sufferers who catch a cold or a stomach bug need to be treated as soon as possible to prevent it worsening their dementia, new research has suggested.

A study by scientists at the University of Southampton found a link between the infections and an increase in inflammation-like reactions in the brain, which led to an increased rate of cognitive decline.

One of the many tragedies of Alzheimer's disease is that patients don't know until it's too late that they actually have the condition. By the time the first signs of forgefulness and confusion set in, experts believe, the disease has already been ravaging the brain for a decade or more, causing irreversible damage.

Veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have a significantly higher risk of developing dementia comparing with veterans who don't have the disorder, a study reports today.

Using data from the Department of Veterans Affairs National Patient Care Database, scientists from the University of California-San Francisco analyzed files of 181,093 veterans ages 55 and older without dementia from 1997 to 2000. The mean age at the start of the study was 68, and 97% were male.